After all he had gone through that night, it disturbed Fenn very little to find on the following morning that the professional cracksman had gone off with one of the cups in his study. Certainly, it was not as bad as it might have been, for he had only abstracted one out of the half dozen that decorated the room. Fenn was a fine runner, and had won the "sprint" events at the sports for two years now.
The news of the burglary at Kay's soon spread about the school. Mr Kay mentioned it to Mr Mulholland, and Mr Mulholland discussed it at lunch with the prefects of his house. The juniors of Kay's were among the last to hear of it, but when they did, they made the most of it, to the disgust of the School House fags, to whom the episode seemed in the nature of an infringement of copyright. Several spirited by-battles took place that day owing to this, and at the lower end of the table of Kay's dining-room at tea that evening there could be seen many swollen countenances. All, however, wore pleased smiles. They had proved to the School House their right to have a burglary of their own if they liked. It was the first occasion since Kennedy had become head of the house that Kay's had united in a common and patriotic cause.
Directly afternoon school was over that day, Fenn started for the town. The only thing that caused him any anxiety now was the fear lest the cap which he had left in the house in the High Street might rise up as evidence against him later on. Except for that, he was safe. The headmaster had evidently not remembered his absence from the festive board, or he would have spoken to him on the subject before now. If he could but recover the lost cap, all would be right with the world. Give him back that cap, and he would turn over a new leaf with a rapidity and emphasis which would lower the world's record for that performance. He would be a reformed character. He would even go to the extent of calling a truce with Mr Kay, climbing down to Kennedy, and offering him his services in his attempt to lick the house into shape.
As a matter of fact, he had had this idea before. Jimmy Silver, who was in the position—common at school—of being very friendly with two people who were not on speaking terms, had been at him on the topic.
"It's rot," James had said, with perfect truth, "to see two chaps like you making idiots of themselves over a house like Kay's. And it's all your fault, too," he had added frankly. "You know jolly well you aren't playing the game. You ought to be backing Kennedy up all the time. Instead of which, you go about trying to look like a Christian martyr—"
"I don't," said Fenn, indignantly.
"Well, like a stuffed frog, then—it's all the same to me. It's perfect rot. If I'm walking with Kennedy, you stalk past as if we'd both got the plague or something. And if I'm with you, Kennedy suddenly remembers an appointment, and dashes off at a gallop in the opposite direction. If I had to award the bronze medal for drivelling lunacy in this place, you would get it by a narrow margin, and Kennedy would beproxime, and honourably mentioned. Silly idiots!"
"Don't stop, Jimmy. Keep it up," said Fenn, settling himself in his chair. The dialogue was taking place in Silver's study.
"My dear chap, you didn't think I'd finished, surely! I was only trying to find some description that would suit you. But it's no good. I can't. Look here, take my advice—the advice," he added, in the melodramatic voice he was in the habit of using whenever he wished to conceal the fact that he was speaking seriously, "of an old man who wishes ye both well. Go to Kennedy, fling yourself on his chest, and say, 'We have done those things which we ought not to have done—' No. As you were! Compn'y, 'shun! Say 'J. Silver says that I am a rotter. I am a worm. I have made an ass of myself. But I will be good. Shake, pard!' That's what you've got to do. Come in."
And in had come Kennedy. The attractions of Kay's were small, and he usually looked in on Jimmy Silver in the afternoons.
"Oh, sorry," he said, as he saw Fenn. "I thought you were alone, Jimmy."
"I was just going," said Fenn, politely.
"Oh, don't let me disturb you," protested Kennedy, with winning courtesy.
"Not at all," said Fenn.
"Oh, if you really were—"
"Oh, yes, really."
"Get out, then," growled Jimmy, who had been listening in speechless disgust to the beautifully polite conversation just recorded. "I'll forward that bronze medal to you, Fenn."
And as the door closed he had turned to rend Kennedy as he had rent Fenn; while Fenn walked back to Kay's feeling that there was a good deal in what Jimmy had said.
So that when he went down town that afternoon in search of his cap, he pondered as he walked over the advisability of making a fresh start. It would not be a bad idea. But first he must concentrate his energies on recovering what he had lost.
He found the house in the High Street without a great deal of difficulty, for he had marked the spot carefully as far as that had been possible in the fog.
The door was opened to him, not by the old man with whom he had exchanged amenities on the previous night, but by a short, thick fellow, who looked exactly like a picture of a loafer from the pages of a comic journal. He eyed Fenn with what might have been meant for an inquiring look. To Fenn it seemed merely menacing.
"Wodyer want?" he asked, abruptly.
Eckleton was not a great distance from London, and, as a consequence, many of London's choicest blackguards migrated there from time to time. During the hopping season, and while the local races were on, one might meet with two Cockney twangs for every country accent.
"I want to see the old gentleman who lives here," said Fenn.
"Wot old gentleman?"
"I'm afraid I don't know his name. Is this a home for old gentlemen? If you'll bring out all you've got, I'll find my one."
"Wodyer want see the old gentleman for?"
"To ask for my cap. I left it here last night."
"Oh, yer left it 'ere last night! Well, yer cawn't see 'im."
"Not from here, no," agreed Fenn. "Being only eyes, you see," he quoted happily, "my wision's limited. But if you wouldn't mind moving out of the way—"
"Yer cawn't see 'im. Blimey, 'ow much more of it, I should like to know. Gerroutovit, cawn't yer! You and yer caps."
And he added a searching expletive by way of concluding the sentence fittingly. After which he slipped back and slammed the door, leaving Fenn waiting outside like the Peri at the gate of Paradise.
His resemblance to the Peri ceased after the first quarter of a minute. That lady, we read, took her expulsion lying down. Fenn was more vigorous. He seized the knocker, and banged lustily on the door. He had given up all hope of getting back the cap. All he wanted was to get the doorkeeper out into the open again, when he would proceed to show him, to the best of his ability, what was what. It would not be the first time he had taken on a gentleman of the same class and a similar type of conversation.
But the man refused to be drawn. For all the reply Fenn's knocking produced, the house might have been empty. At last, having tired his wrist and collected a small crowd of Young Eckleton, who looked as if they expected him to proceed to further efforts for their amusement, he gave it up, and retired down the High Street with what dignity he could command—which, as he was followed for the first fifty yards by the silent but obviously expectant youths, was not a great deal.
They left him, disappointed, near the Town Hall, and Fenn continued on his way alone. The window of the grocer's shop, with its tins of preserved apricots and pots of jam, recalled to his mind what he had forgotten, that the food at Kay's, though it might be wholesome (which he doubted), was undeniably plain, and, secondly, that he had run out of jam. Now that he was here he might as well supply that deficiency.
Now it chanced that Master Wren, of Kay's, was down town—without leave, as was his habit—on an errand of a very similar nature. Walton had found that he, like Fenn, lacked those luxuries of life which are so much more necessary than necessities, and, being unable to go himself, owing to the unfortunate accident of being kept in by his form-master, had asked Wren to go for him. Wren's visit to the grocer's was just ending when Fenn's began.
They met in the doorway.
Wren looked embarrassed, and nearly dropped a pot of honey, which he secured low down after the manner of a catch in the slips. Fenn, on the other hand, took no notice of his fellow-Kayite, but walked on into the shop and began to inspect the tins of biscuits which were stacked on the floor by the counter.
Wren did not quite know what to make of this. Why had not Fenn said a word to him? There were one or two prefects in the school whom he might have met even at such close quarters and yet have cherished a hope that they had not seen him. Once he had run right into Drew, of the School House, and escaped unrecognised. But with Fenn it was different. Compared to Fenn, lynxes were astigmatic. He must have spotted him.
There was a vein of philosophy in Wren's composition. He felt that he might just as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. In other words, having been caught down town without leave, he might as well stay there and enjoy himself a little while longer before going back to be executed. So he strolled off down the High Street, bought a few things at a stationer's, and wound up with an excellent tea at the confectioner's by the post-office.
It was as he was going to this meal that Kennedy caught sight of him. Kennedy had come down town to visit the local photographer, to whom he had entrusted a fortnight before the pleasant task of taking his photograph. As he had heard nothing from him since, he was now coming to investigate. He entered the High Street as Wren was turning into the confectioner's, saw him, and made a note of it for future reference.
When Wren returned to the house just before lock-up, he sought counsel of Walton.
"I say," he said, as he handed over the honey he had saved so neatly from destruction, "what would you do? Just as I was coming out of the shop, I barged into Fenn. He must have twigged me."
"Didn't he say anything?"
"Not a word. I couldn't make it out, because he must have seen me. We weren't a yard away from one another."
"It's dark in the shop," suggested Walton.
"Not at the door; which is where we met."
Before Walton could find anything to say in reply to this, their conversation was interrupted by Spencer.
"Kennedy wants you, Wren," said Spencer. "You'd better buck up; he's in an awful wax."
Next to Walton, the vindictive Spencer objected most to Wren, and he did not attempt to conceal the pleasure he felt in being the bearer of this ominous summons.
The group broke up. Wren went disconsolately upstairs to Kennedy's study; Walton smacked Spencer's head—more as a matter of form than because he had done anything special to annoy him—and retired to the senior dayroom; while Spencer, muttering darkly to himself, avoided a second smack and took cover in the junior room, where he consoled himself by toasting a piece of india-rubber in the gas till it made the atmosphere painful to breathe in, and recalling with pleasure the condition Walton's face had been in for the day or two following his encounter with Kennedy in the dormitory.
Kennedy was working when Wren knocked at his door.
He had not much time to spare on a bounds-breaking fag; and his manner was curt.
"I saw you going into Rose's, in the High Street, this afternoon, Wren," he said, looking up from his Greek prose. "I didn't give you leave. Come up here after prayers tonight. Shut the door."
Wren went down to consult Walton again. His attitude with regard to a licking from the head of the house was much like that of the other fags. Custom had, to a certain extent, inured him to these painful interviews, but still, if it was possible, he preferred to keep out of them. Under Fenn's rule he had often found a tolerably thin excuse serve his need. Fenn had so many other things to do that he was not unwilling to forego an occasional licking, if the excuse was good enough. And he never took the trouble to find out whether the ingenious stories Wren was wont to serve up to him were true or not. Kennedy, Wren reflected uncomfortably, had given signs that this easy-going method would not do for him. Still, it might be possible to hunt up some story that would meet the case. Walton had a gift in that direction.
"He says I'm to go to his study after prayers," reported Wren. "Can't you think of any excuse that would do?"
"Can't understand Fenn running you in," said Walton. "I thought he never spoke to Kennedy."
Wren explained.
"It wasn't Fenn who ran me in. Kennedy was down town, too, and twigged me going into Rose's. I went there and had tea after I got your things at the grocer's."
"Oh, he spotted you himself, did he?" said Walton. "And he doesn't know Fenn saw you?"
"I don't think so."
"Then I've got a ripping idea. When he has you up tonight, swear that you got leave from Fenn to go down town."
"But he'll ask him."
"The odds are that he won't. He and Fenn had a row at the beginning of term, and never speak to one another if they can help it. It's ten to one that he will prefer taking your yarn to going and asking Fenn if it's true or not. Then he's bound to let you off."
Wren admitted that the scheme was sound.
At the conclusion of prayers, therefore, he went up again to Kennedy's study, with a more hopeful air than he had worn on his previous visit.
"Come in," said Kennedy, reaching for the swagger-stick which he was accustomed to use at these ceremonies.
"Please, Kennedy," said Wren, glibly. "I did get leave to go down town this afternoon."
"What!"
Wren repeated the assertion.
"Who gave you leave?"
"Fenn."
The thing did not seem to be working properly. When he said the word "Fenn", Wren expected to see Kennedy retire baffled, conscious that there was nothing more to be said or done. Instead of this, the remark appeared to infuriate him.
"It's just like your beastly cheek," he said, glaring at the red-headed delinquent, "to ask Fenn for leave instead of me. You know perfectly well that only the head of the house can give leave to go down town. I don't know how often you and the rest of the junior dayroom have played this game, but it's going to stop now. You'd better remember another time when you want to go to Rose's that I've got to be consulted first."
With which he proceeded to ensure to the best of his ability that the memory of Master Wren should not again prove treacherous in this respect.
"How did it work?" asked Walton, when Wren returned.
"It didn't," said Wren, briefly.
Walton expressed an opinion that Kennedy was a cad; which, however sound in itself, did little to improve the condition of Wren.
Having disposed of Wren, Kennedy sat down seriously to consider this new development of a difficult situation. Hitherto he had imagined Fenn to be merely a sort of passive resister who confined himself to the Achilles-in-his-tent business, and was only a nuisance because he refused to back him up. To find him actually aiding and abetting the house in its opposition to its head was something of a shock. And yet, if he had given Wren leave to go down town, he had probably done the same kind office by others. It irritated Kennedy more than the most overt act of enmity would have done. It was not good form. It was hitting below the belt. There was, of course, the chance that Wren's story had not been true. But he did not build much on that. He did not yet know his Wren well, and believed that such an audacious lie would be beyond the daring of a fag. But it would be worth while to make inquiries. He went down the passage to Fenn's study. Fenn, however, had gone to bed, so he resolved to approach him on the subject next day. There was no hurry.
He went to his dormitory, feeling very bitter towards Fenn, and rehearsing home truths with which to confound him on the morrow.
In these hustling times it is not always easy to get ten minutes' conversation with an acquaintance in private. There was drill in the dinner hour next day for the corps, to which Kennedy had to go directly after lunch. It did not end till afternoon school began. When afternoon school was over, he had to turn out and practise scrummaging with the first fifteen, in view of an important school match which was coming off on the following Saturday. Kennedy had not yet received his cap, but he was playing regularly for the first fifteen, and was generally looked upon as a certainty for one of the last places in the team. Fenn, being a three-quarter, had not to participate in this practice. While the forwards were scrummaging on the second fifteen ground, the outsides ran and passed on the first fifteen ground over at the other end of the field. Fenn's training for the day finished earlier than Kennedy's, the captain of the Eckleton fifteen, who led the scrum, not being satisfied with the way in which the forwards wheeled. He kept them for a quarter of an hour after the outsides had done their day's work, and when Kennedy got back to the house and went to Fenn's study, the latter was not there. He had evidently changed and gone out again, for his football clothes were lying in a heap in a corner of the room. Going back to his own study, he met Spencer.
"Have you seen Fenn?" he asked.
"No," said the fag. "He hasn't come in."
"He's come in all right, but he's gone out again. Go and ask Taylor if he knows where he is."
Taylor was Fenn's fag.
Spencer went to the junior dayroom, and returned with the information that Taylor did not know.
"Oh, all right, then—it doesn't matter," said Kennedy, and went into his study to change.
He had completed this operation, and was thinking of putting his kettle on for tea, when there was a knock at the door.
It was Baker, Jimmy Silver's fag.
"Oh, Kennedy," he said, "Silver says, if you aren't doing anything special, will you go over to his study to tea?"
"Why, is there anything on?"
It struck him as curious that Jimmy should take the trouble to send his fag over to Kay's with a formal invitation. As a rule the head of Blackburn's kept open house. His friends were given to understand that they could drop in whenever they liked. Kennedy looked in for tea three times a week on an average.
"I don't think so," said Baker.
"Who else is going to be there?"
Jimmy Silver sometimes took it into his head to entertain weird beings from other houses whose brothers or cousins he had met in the holidays. On such occasions he liked to have some trusty friend by him to help the conversation along. It struck Kennedy that this might be one of those occasions. If so, he would send back a polite but firm refusal of the invitation. Last time he had gone to help Jimmy entertain a guest of this kind, conversation had come to a dead standstill a quarter of an hour after his arrival, the guest refusing to do anything except eat prodigiously, and reply "Yes" or "No", as the question might demand, when spoken to. Also he had declined to stir from his seat till a quarter to seven. Kennedy was not going to be let in for another orgy of that nature if he knew it.
"Who's with Silver?" he asked.
"Only Fenn," said Baker.
Kennedy pondered for a moment.
"All right," he said, at last, "tell him I'll be round in a few minutes."
He sat thinking the thing over after Baker had gone back to Blackburn's with the message. He saw Silver's game, of course. Jimmy had made no secret for some time of his disgust at the coolness between Kennedy and Fenn. Not knowing all the circumstances, he considered it absolute folly. If only he could get the two together over a quiet pot of tea, he imagined that it would not be a difficult task to act effectively as a peacemaker.
Kennedy was sorry for Jimmy. He appreciated his feelings in the matter. He would not have liked it himself if his two best friends had been at daggers drawn. Still, he could not bring himself to treat Fenn as if nothing had happened, simply to oblige Silver. There had been a time when he might have done it, but now that Fenn had started a deliberate campaign against him by giving Wren—and probably, thought Kennedy, half the other fags in the house—leave down town when he ought to have sent them on to him, things had gone too far. However, he could do no harm by going over to Jimmy's to tea, even if Fenn was there. He had not looked to interview Fenn before an audience, but if that audience consisted only of Jimmy, it would not matter so much.
His advent surprised Fenn. The astute James, fancying that if he mentioned that he was expecting Kennedy to tea, Fenn would make a bolt for it, had said nothing about it.
When Kennedy arrived there was one of those awkward pauses which are so difficult to fill up in a satisfactory manner.
"Now you're up, Fenn," said Jimmy, as the latter rose, evidently with the intention of leaving the study, "you might as well reach down that toasting-fork and make some toast."
"I'm afraid I must be off now, Jimmy," said Fenn.
"No you aren't," said Silver. "You bustle about and make yourself useful, and don't talk rot. You'll find your cup on that shelf over there, Kennedy. It'll want a wipe round. Better use the table-cloth."
There was silence in the study until tea was ready. Then Jimmy Silver spoke.
"Long time since we three had tea together," he said, addressing the remark to the teapot.
"Kennedy's a busy man," said Fenn, suavely. "He's got a house to look after."
"And I'm going to look after it," said Kennedy, "as you'll find."
Jimmy Silver put in a plaintive protest.
"I wish you two men wouldn't talk shop," he said. "It's bad enough having Kay's next door to one, without your dragging it into the conversation. How were the forwards this evening, Kennedy?"
"Not bad," said Kennedy, shortly.
"I wonder if we shall lick Tuppenham on Saturday?"
"I don't know," said Kennedy; and there was silence again.
"Look here, Jimmy," said Kennedy, after a long pause, during which the head of Blackburn's tried to fill up the blank in the conversation by toasting a piece of bread in a way which was intended to suggest that if he were not so busy, the talk would be unchecked and animated, "it's no good. We must have it out some time, so it may as well be here as anywhere else. I've been looking for Fenn all day."
"Sorry to give you all that trouble," said Fenn, with a sneer. "Got something important to say?"
"Yes."
"Go ahead, then."
Jimmy Silver stood between them with the toasting-fork in his hand, as if he meant to plunge it into the one who first showed symptoms of flying at the other's throat. He was unhappy. His peace-making tea-party was not proving a success.
"I wanted to ask you," said Kennedy, quietly, "what you meant by giving the fags leave down town when you knew that they ought to come to me?"
The gentle and intelligent reader will remember (though that miserable worm, the vapid and irreflective reader, will have forgotten) that at the beginning of the term the fags of Kay's had endeavoured to show their approval of Fenn and their disapproval of Kennedy by applying to the former for leave when they wished to go to the town; and that Fenn had received them in the most ungrateful manner with blows instead of exeats. Strong in this recollection, he was not disturbed by Kennedy's question. Indeed, it gave him a comfortable feeling of rectitude. There is nothing more pleasant than to be accused to your face of something which you can deny on the spot with an easy conscience. It is like getting a very loose ball at cricket. Fenn felt almost friendly towards Kennedy.
"I meant nothing," he replied, "for the simple reason that I didn't do it."
"I caught Wren down town yesterday, and he said you had given him leave."
"Then he lied, and I hope you licked him."
"There you are, you see," broke in Jimmy Silver triumphantly, "it's all a misunderstanding. You two have got no right to be cutting one another. Why on earth can't you stop all this rot, and behave like decent members of society again?"
"As a matter of fact," said Fenn, "they did try it on earlier in the term. I wasted a lot of valuable time pointing out to them with a swagger-stick—that I was the wrong person to come to. I'm sorry you should have thought I could play it as low down as that."
Kennedy hesitated. It is not very pleasant to have to climb down after starting a conversation in a stormy and wrathful vein. But it had to be done.
"I'm sorry, Fenn," he said; "I was an idiot."
Jimmy Silver cut in again.
"You were," he said, with enthusiasm. "You both were. I used to think Fenn was a bigger idiot than you, but now I'm inclined to call it a dead heat. What's the good of going on trying to see which of you can make the bigger fool of himself? You've both lowered all previous records."
"I suppose we have," said Fenn. "At least, I have."
"No, I have," said Kennedy.
"You both have," said Jimmy Silver. "Another cup of tea, anybody? Say when."
Fenn and Kennedy walked back to Kay's together, and tea-d together in Fenn's study on the following afternoon, to the amazement—and even scandal—of Master Spencer, who discovered them at it. Spencer liked excitement; and with the two leaders of the house at logger-heads, things could never be really dull. If, as appearances seemed to suggest, they had agreed to settle their differences, life would become monotonous again—possibly even unpleasant.
This thought flashed through Spencer's brain (as he called it) when he opened Fenn's door and found him helping Kennedy to tea.
"Oh, the headmaster wants to see you, please, Fenn," said Spencer, recovering from his amazement, "and told me to give you this."
"This" was a prefect's cap. Fenn recognised it without difficulty. It was the cap he had left in the sitting-room of the house in the High Street.
"Thanks," said Fenn.
He stood twirling the cap round in his hand as Spencer closed the door. Then he threw it on to the table. He did not feel particularly disturbed at the thought of the interview that was to come. He had been expecting the cap to turn up, like the corpse of Eugene Aram's victim, at some inconvenient moment. It was a pity that it had come just as things looked as if they might be made more or less tolerable in Kay's. He had been looking forward with a grim pleasure to the sensation that would be caused in the house when it became known that he and Kennedy had formed a combine for its moral and physical benefit. But that was all over. He would be sacked, beyond a doubt. In the history of Eckleton, as far as he knew it, there had never been a case of a fellow breaking out at night and not being expelled when he was caught. It was one of the cardinal sins in the school code. There had been the case of Peter Brown, which his brother had mentioned in his letter. And in his own time he had seen three men vanish from Eckleton for the same offence. He did not flatter himself that his record at the school was so good as to make it likely that the authorities would stretch a point in his favour.
"So long, Kennedy," he said. "You'll be here when I get back, I suppose?"
"What does he want you for, do you think?" asked Kennedy, stretching himself, with a yawn. It never struck him that Fenn could be in any serious trouble. Fenn was a prefect; and when the headmaster sent for a prefect, it was generally to tell him that he had got a split infinitive in his English Essay that week.
"Glad I'm not you," he added, as a gust of wind rattled the sash, and the rain dashed against the pane. "Beastly evening to have to go out."
"It isn't the rain I mind," said Fenn; "it's what's going to happen when I get indoors again," and refused to explain further. There would be plenty of time to tell Kennedy the whole story when he returned. It was better not to keep the headmaster waiting.
The first thing he noticed on reaching the School House was the strange demeanour of the butler. Whenever Fenn had had occasion to call on the headmaster hitherto, Watson had admitted him with the air of a high priest leading a devotee to a shrine of which he was the sole managing director. This evening he seemed restless, excited.
"Good evening, Mr Fenn," he said. "This way, sir."
Those were his actual words. Fenn had not known for certain until now that hecouldtalk. On previous occasions their conversations had been limited to an "Is the headmaster in?" from Fenn, and a stately inclination of the head from Watson. The man was getting a positive babbler.
With an eager, springy step, distantly reminiscent of a shopwalker heading a procession of customers, with a touch of the style of the winner in a walking-race to Brighton, the once slow-moving butler led the way to the headmaster's study.
For the first time since he started out, Fenn was conscious of a tremor. There is something about a closed door, behind which somebody is waiting to receive one, which appeals to the imagination, especially if the ensuing meeting is likely to be an unpleasant one.
"Ah, Fenn," said the headmaster. "Come in."
Fenn wondered. It was not in this tone of voice that the Head was wont to begin a conversation which was going to prove painful.
"You've got your cap, Fenn? I gave it to a small boy in your house to take to you."
"Yes, sir."
He had given up all hope of understanding the Head's line of action. Unless he was playing a deep game, and intended to flash out suddenly with a keen question which it would be impossible to parry, there seemed nothing to account for the strange absence of anything unusual in his manner. He referred to the cap as if he had borrowed it from Fenn, and had returned it by bearer, hoping that its loss had not inconvenienced him at all.
"I daresay," continued the Head, "that you are wondering how it came into my possession. You missed it, of course?"
"Very much, sir," said Fenn, with perfect truth.
"It has just been brought to my house, together with a great many other things, more valuable, perhaps,"—here he smiled a head-magisterial smile—"by a policeman from Eckleton."
Fenn was still unequal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation. He could understand, in a vague way, that for some unexplained reason things were going well for him, but beyond that his mind was in a whirl.
"You will remember the unfortunate burglary of Mr Kay's house and mine. Your cap was returned with the rest of the stolen property."
"Just so," thought Fenn. "The rest of the stolen property? Exactly.Goon. Don't mind me. I shall begin to understand soon, I suppose."
He condensed these thoughts into the verbal reply, "Yes, sir."
"I sent for you to identify your own property. I see there is a silver cup belonging to you. Perhaps there are also other articles. Go and see. You will find them on that table. They are in a hopeless state of confusion, having been conveyed here in a sack. Fortunately, nothing is broken."
He was thinking of certain valuables belonging to himself which had been abstracted from his drawing-room on the occasion of the burglar's visit to the School House.
Fenn crossed the room, and began to inspect the table indicated. On it was as mixed a collection of valuable and useless articles as one could wish to see. He saw his cup at once, and attached himself to it. But of all the other exhibits in this private collection, he could recognise nothing else as his property.
"There is nothing of mine here except the cup, sir," he said.
"Ah. Then that is all, I think. You are going back to Mr Kay's. Then please send Kennedy to me. Good night, Fenn."
"Good night, sir."
Even now Fenn could not understand it. The more he thought it over, the more his brain reeled. He could grasp the fact that his cap and his cup were safe again, and that there was evidently going to be no sacking for the moment. But how it had all happened, and how the police had got hold of his cap, and why they had returned it with the loot gathered in by the burglar who had visited Kay's and the School House, were problems which, he had to confess, were beyond him.
He walked to Kay's through the rain with the cup under his mackintosh, and freely admitted to himself that there were things in heaven and earth—and particularly earth—which no fellow could understand.
"I don't know," he said, when Kennedy pressed for an explanation of the reappearance of the cup. "It's no good asking me. I'm going now to borrow the matron's smelling-salts: I feel faint. After that I shall wrap a wet towel round my head, and begin to think it out. Meanwhile, you're to go over to the Head. He's had enough of me, and he wants to have a look at you."
"Me?" said Kennedy. "Why?"
"Now, is it any good askingme??" said Fenn. "If you can find out what it's all about, I'll thank you if you'll come and tell me."
Ten minutes later Kennedy returned. He carried a watch and chain.
"I couldn't think what had happened to my watch," he said. "I missed it on the day after that burglary here, but I never thought of thinking it had been collared by a professional. I thought I must have lost it somewhere."
"Well, have you grasped what's been happening?"
"I've grasped my ticker, which is good enough for me. Half a second. The old man wants to see the rest of the prefects. He's going to work through the house in batches, instead of man by man. I'll just go round the studies and rout them out, and then I'll come back and explain. It's perfectly simple."
"Glad you think so," said Fenn.
Kennedy went and returned.
"Now," he said, subsiding into a deck-chair, "what is it you don't understand?"
"I don't understand anything. Begin at the beginning."
"I got the yarn from the butler—what's his name?"
"Those who know him well enough to venture to give him a name—I've never dared to myself—call him Watson," said Fenn.
"I got the yarn from Watson. He was as excited as anything about it. I never saw him like that before."
"I noticed something queer about him."
"He's awfully bucked, and is doing the Ancient Mariner business all over the place. Wants to tell the story to everyone he sees."
"Well, suppose you follow his example. I want to hear about it."
"Well, it seems that the police have been watching a house at the corner of the High Street for some time—what's up?"
"Nothing. Go on."
"But you said, 'By Jove!'"
"Well, why shouldn't I say 'By Jove'? When you are telling sensational yarns, it's my duty to say something of the sort. Buck along."
"It's a house not far from the Town Hall, at the corner of Pegwell Street—you've probably been there scores of times."
"Once or twice, perhaps," said Fenn. "Well?"
"About a month ago two suspicious-looking bounders went to live there. Watson says their faces were enough to hang them. Anyhow, they must have been pretty bad, for they made even the Eckleton police, who are pretty average-sized rotters, suspicious, and they kept an eye on them. Well, after a bit there began to be a regular epidemic of burglary round about here. Watson says half the houses round were broken into. The police thought it was getting a bit too thick, but they didn't like to raid the house without some jolly good evidence that these two men were the burglars, so they lay low and waited till they should give them a decent excuse for jumping on them. They had had a detective chap down from London, by the way, to see if he couldn't do something about the burglaries, and he kept his eye on them, too."
"They had quite a gallery. Didn't they notice any of the eyes?"
"No. Then after a bit one of them nipped off to London with a big bag. The detective chap was after him like a shot. He followed him from the station, saw him get into a cab, got into another himself, and stuck to him hard. The front cab stopped at about a dozen pawnbrokers' shops. The detective Johnny took the names and addresses, and hung on to the burglar man all day, and finally saw him return to the station, where he caught a train back to Eckleton. Directly he had seen him off, the detective got into a cab, called on the dozen pawnbrokers, showed his card, with 'Scotland Yard' on it, I suppose, and asked to see what the other chap had pawned. He identified every single thing as something that had been collared from one of the houses round Eckleton way. So he came back here, told the police, and they raided the house, and there they found stacks of loot of all descriptions."
"Including my cap," said Fenn, thoughtfully. "I see now."
"Rummy the man thinking it worth his while to take an old cap," said Kennedy.
"Very," said Fenn. "But it's been a rum business all along."